


in time, in time

by Nadler



Series: goalie nesting [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, Silly, Slice of Life, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/pseuds/Nadler
Summary: Roberto Luongo is unique among goalies.





	in time, in time

**Author's Note:**

> Another one, y'all. There's probably just a lot of shorts incoming.

In Florida, Roberto Luongo gets asked a question.

It's like a upside down—reverse?—bell curve. That's all Roberto has to say about it. Well, he actually says, "Here, let me draw a picture for you," and goes over to the whiteboard and draws a bell curve, upside down, making a hill. "There's your goalie curve." 

Roberto even draws a dashed line through the right side of the peak and labels it "Lu" and scribbles a little goalie mask next to it. He draws another line horizontally, cutting the hill in half. He looks around to a room full of confused and slightly disgruntled Panthers, Jags, and Reims. 

"Aw, come on, are you making us do math?" Troch complains. 

Roberto shares a look with Reims. As the only other person in this room with first-hand nesting experience, Roberto could hand it off to him. "You want to explain?" 

Reims shakes his head. "All on you. Go ahead." 

It's not like it's a secret. It's just not something anyone just straight up and asks about nesting--or that's what people think. It's kind of like the bathroom thing. And Roberto's already pretty open about that one. 

Goalies peak; everyone knows that. Their nesting peaks, too, which makes sense if everyone only gave half a thought about it. 

So now that Roberto is nearly forty, his nesting period is pretty damn tame, all things considered. He feels it settling into this bones.

He goes into practice with a smile on his face, but he feels a thrum under his skin.

By the time he’s playing drill games and goads Jags into testing his trick shots against him— _for which they are both too old for_ —Roberto knows he’s going to leave soon. He snaps at Reims when he looks over Roberto’s shoulder to look at his positioning, he digs little grooves by the inside of his posts with his skate, and he starts swearing in French a little more. 

The last one might be because Daddy needs to stop trying to prank Marchy.

He plans ahead. He takes rides back and forth when he feels it’s time, and no one really questions it; they think: _Oh, Lu doesn’t want to drive when he’s nesting._ It’s better than a lot of other things it could be. Roberto learns this lesson early—there’s a lot of risk if he, say, suddenly pops off in the middle of driving. 

It’s lucky that he’s only popped away in front of a few people during his whole career, most of them other goalies who didn’t say anything when he was gone between one blink and the next. He was back, of course, in another blink, but they were usually too polite to point out he had a different shirt on. People did tend to think their eyes were playing tricks on them. 

He jokes about it, sometimes. No one actually believes Roberto can time travel; they just think his pre-nesting to early nesting period is his whole nesting time, since he’s antsy.

That’s a peak, too. About halfway through, he goes forward, and then when it’s done, he comes back. Maybe it’s a little cheating to want to play during that time, but everyone would notice if he showed up eighteen years old again. He's mostly balanced out, and few people can tell a difference from him now and him at thirty five, so he calls it a wash when his back's acting up. 

Even he's not really sure how _time travel_ helps his goalie displays, but sometimes it's nice to have a night off and see some of the worn edges play like they should. 

Roberto finally got to see the other side of that when he hit thirty, and it was _weird_ looking at himself younger. He knows he’ll be doing that a lot more often now. Some part of him enjoys the prospect of giving his younger self chores (which he only sometimes did ignore). 

And the most fun part is making shit up to tell him. Roberto thinks it's helped him develop a great sense of humor. 

Roberto goes to bed, wrapped up in the extra three layers he keeps in the closet shelf for just this reason. 

 

In the morning, there’s someone really aggressively cuddling him. Roberto inhales, just in case it might be someone he has to worry about, but he can see his phone on the bedside table. He reaches for it and unlocks it.

Roberto only ends up at the end of next week. He suspects that he maybe, one season, he’ll just stop going. Or start going backwards, which is a thought he doesn’t really care about. 

He’s trying to get up, so he elbows—oh, himself—in the ribs and escapes. Oops. It’s Roberto’s own fault if that’s going to be bruised, but that’s in his near future. 

On second thought, Roberto thinks he should make himself breakfast to make up for it.


End file.
